Our Week in the Forest...

We had a theme this week.... ‘Dinosaurs!!’ and one of our activities included an archaeological corner. Here we had toothbrushes, pots, pans, old bits of rock and stone or any interesting pieces of ceramics that we found around our base camp. Children could then search for their own artefacts or clean the ones we had provided. We talked about what archaeology was, what archaeologists might find, and how they would find these artefacts.

We had a good balance of child led and adult initiated experiences throughout the week. Our regular children often reject offers to join in with adult games, instead choosing to use their imaginations to play for hours with their peers, and embedding their learning through child-initiated play which is so lovely to observe. Our holiday campers this week settled into their new setting really quickly and discovered that their imaginations were better than any activity we educators could facilitate, and in fact, with the loose objects that we provided they engaged in endless open ended role-playing. Their creations were absolutely amazing, using just some ropes, logs and branches they constructed the giant dinosaur skeletons, pirates ships that raced across the ocean and castles hidden among the trees.

As the week went on, the holiday campers started to take much more ownership of the environment; asking for more pieces of rope and help moving larger logs; coming up with new designs for tree swings, many of which worked really well; exploring the natural world in more detail and creating new magical potions from the blackberries. To see them take ownership not only over the environment but over their own learning was truly inspirational.